As director of a school-age day care center for the last four years,
I have been blessed with a human laboratory. I work with about 180 children
in grades kindergarten through fifth grade. One of the great joys of this
job is the intense and real relationship which the staff and I have with
the children. We live with almost 100 children daily. It is very close
to a family feeling in many ways, and it is definitely a community.

Even though I am an accredited California teacher with about 25 years
of teaching experience behind me, it was not until working here that I
really began to experience the joys of working with children. I have come
to explain the difference, to myself anyway, like this: as a teacher I
had to impose a system on the children which had been orchestrated by a
removed bureaucratic hierarchy. "Educating children," in such
a context, almost seems to mean taking them out of their real life, relative
frameworks and putting information into them.

In day care, we can live with the children in a way that is relevant
to them. We can look to the children and say: "What do you want to
do? We will help you do it." We can couch reading, writing, and arithmetic
within the realms of carpentry, sewing, block building, puppetry, drama,
animals, and games. We have the privilege of the freedom of working with
children in a more natural setting, natural to their own developmental
patterns. Another great advantage is that six grade levels live together,
learning from and nurturing each other, along with the inevitable fights
and conflicts. The first grader watches the fifth grader play Risk and
then begins to model, pretending at first, playing Risk. The house area
is a potent realm: the fifth graders just finish pretending to be on a
date in a restaurant. They leave and within two minutes we observe the
same scene, only with second graders. This process is constant. We can
ask a fourth-grade child to clean and bandage a minor scrape for a kindergartner
and the nurse- or doctor-to-be types just leap at this opportunity for
"real life practice." All of this means that I have the privilege
of observing children develop not only intellectually, but socially, emotionally,
psychologically and spiritually.

Throughout this talk I will be sharing examples of spiritual qualities
and spiritual living as they have been gleaned from not only the above
laboratory but also from the rich family experiences which parents have
shared with me over the years concerning their children's development and
their family environments and experiments.

* * *

Dick Van Dyke wrote a book in 1970 called Faith, Hope and Hilarity,
the Child's Eye View of Religion. It's a delightful compilation of
children's questions, thoughts, feelings and personal experiences with
and about God. He shares his 14-year-old daughter's statement shortly after
they had moved to the desert in Arizona away from the maddening crowds.
She said: "When I go walking in the desert, I realize I don't have
to go making up wordsI don't have to talk to praythere's just an awareness
of the Presence. I acknowledge the Spirit of God right where I am. That's
praying. I know I've established a communication between myself and my
Maker without having to talk."

Often, even with minimal guidance from the adult world, children seem
to know about God, sense his presence and feel his love for them. I have
found children, especially between the ages of 5 and 12 to be keenly responsive
to concepts and talk about God; life and death; truth, beauty, and goodness;
love; helping others; and suffering.

David Heller, a leading authority on children's spiritual development,
discusses the emotional and spiritual growth of children as it relates
to their perceptions of God. In his book, Talking to Your Child about
God, he examines the crucial years between 4 and 12, when children
form their most basic ideas about God and religion.

In this book he shares some of the real life letters which children
have written to God:

Liz Marie, age 7, writes, "Dear Lady God, I love you. And I want
to thank you for making the color pink. Pink is a beautiful creation. I
think in heaven you must have made everything pink. Pink cushions, pink
houses, even pink clouds. I just hope the boys don't feel too out of place.
That would be too bad. I love you lots."

Tamara, age 12, writes: "It's all woven together. All of our lives.
And God is at the center."

And Walt, age 10, writes: "Dear God, I love you more than anybody
else that I do not know."

I have a picture of Mother Teresa on my office wall and there's nothing
especially appealing about it to young children--she looks old, wrinkled,
and solemn. When they ask who that sad-looking person is, I leap at the
opportunity to tell them that she is one of the world's greatest spiritual
leaders. Then they always ask, "What does she do?" As I tell
them how she cares for some of the world's poorest people, picking up dying
people off the street to help them die with peace and a sense of being
loved, I can almost feel the Thought Adjuster shining through with this
inspiration of greatness.

One mother wrote about her child's first expressed ability to comprehend
the invisible nature of God. Her son's teacher had read The Very Hungry
Caterpillar (a story about the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly).
The teacher had the children dramatize the event by crawling one-by-one
into an enormous butcher paper cocoon and then emerge as butterflies. This
five year old emerged with these words: "Very truthful idea--God can
disappear."

In order to recognize spiritual living and acknowledge spiritual qualities
in children, we have to first look at ourselves. Where are we in our spiritual
and personal development? How does our level of development affect the
lives of our children?

I will share with you some of my understandings of how we can work with
the spiritual gifts--the adjutant spirits, the Thought Adjuster, the Spirit
of Truth--to make the soil for our children's spiritual development more
fertile. Finally, I would like to encourage all of us to examine what it
means for us to be experiencing the combined privileges and duties of being
students of the fifth epochal revelation and being "in partnership
with God, raising his sons and daughters." What are our responsibilities,
our hopes and visions for their lives? What can we do to provide the foundation
for the skills they will need to carry the torches of truth, beauty, goodness
and love so that their families, friends and society will better see the
paths about which our Master came to tell us?

Seeing Through Children's Eyes

A feeling type of 6 year old told his verbal, well educated, intellectualized
father who was trying to explain the Trinity of God being three persons
in one, that, "There really was only one God because God fills every
place and there's no room for another one. If you were a kid like me, dad,
you would not have to use all of those words 'cause you would feel it."
The father swallowed his humble pie and realized that his intellectualizations
had interfered with his son's simple desire to feel the presence of God
with his father, who needs to get in touch with his own child inside himself
to be able to see where his 6-year-old boy is really at. We must look at
children through the eyes of the child in ourselves.

When I was working with a group of 2 to 6 year olds, we almost became
fire worshipers because a single candle in a thank you God ceremony had
such an effect in its ability to set the mood for feeling the presence
of God. Woe be to the one who blew it out before the proper time!

Jesus said many times that we must become as little children to enter
the kingdom:

[T]he kingdom of heaven can best be realized by acquiring the spiritual
attitude of a sincere child. It is not the mental immaturity of the child
that I commend to you but rather the spiritual simplicity of such
an easy-believing and fully-trusting little one. It is not so important
that you should know about the fact of God as that you should increasingly
grow in the ability to feel the presence of God. (*1733)

On page 1861 he gives us some specific qualities of children to emulate
(or allow to develop in ourselves): "To come as a little child, to
receive the bestowal of sonship as a gift; to submit to the doing of the
Father's will without questioning and in the full confidence and genuine
trustfulness of the Father's wisdom; to come into the kingdom free from
prejudice and preconception; to be open-minded and teachable like an unspoiled
child."

It is the "attitude of mind" and the "response of spirit"
of the child which allows mortal man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We
can easily observe this attitude of mind and response of spirit in children:

A seven-year-old girl who is moving out of early childhood into the
next stage of youth had been experiencing a lot of temper tantrums and
emotional ups and downs. After quite a few months of parental involvement
in helping her to adjust to her world and control herself, she finally
announced to her family one night at dinner that she had figured out what
to do about meanness-- "Just fill myself up with love so full it just
squeezes the meanness right out."

A five year old had been learning sign language and one day she announced
to her mother she had made up a sign for God. She put both her hands on
her heart and then moved them from her heart out to the world, offering
her love.

We can intellectually see that these are desirable characteristics to
have, but how does one get them? How do we as adults become as little children
so that we may see our children through the eyes of the child of God inside
of each of us? On page 1585, Jesus responds to Thomas's concern about how
children are easily deceived: "When I asked you to become as little
children as the price of entering the kingdom, I referred not to ease of
deception, mere willingness to believe, nor to quickness to trust pleasing
strangers. What I did desire that you should gather from the illustration
was the child-father relationship. You are the child, and it is your
Father's kingdom you seek to enter." It is our relationship with our
Father that will allow us not only to enter and grow in his kingdom, but
will allow us to see the spiritual qualities in our children. "[T]he
divine will is observed to shine brighter and brighter in the spiritualizing
acts of those creatures of time who have begun to taste the divine delights
of experiencing the relationship of the personality of man with the personality
of the Universal Father." (*138) As we develop our relationship with
God, our light will shine brighter and clearly light the path for our children
who are attracted to spiritual light like fireflies to light bulbs. One
mother said it very succinctly: "Parents are limited in seeing spiritual
living in their own children by their own degree of spiritual advancement.
A child is likely to mirror the spirit values of their parents and, depending
upon their temperament, would exhibit those values with that frame of reference."

Finding the Hidden Treasures

A man and woman had lived in their well established home for 40 years
when she became ill with a slowly debilitating and terminal illness. For
40 years she had planted flowers, weeded, pruned, fertilized, and watered,
but during the last year of her illness, the 90-year-old man became so
inundated with the tasks of getting through each day that caring for this
paradisiacal garden became bottom priority and it became overgrown with
weeds. As the wife was dying, she and her husband talked about selling
the house. They both decided that after she passed on and the house was
put up for sale, her husband would try to sell to a family who would discover
and appreciate the hidden beauties of the years of gardening work. So they
decided not to fix up the garden. When the wife died, the husband put the
house up for sale, but retained control over who would buy it. The house
was in a desirable area and many people looked at it, but when they saw
the overgrown weeds, they thought it was so ugly and would take so much
landscaping work that they did not even go close to the hidden garden,
but looked at the unkempt yard from a distance. One couple wanted to put
in a large swimming pool where the hidden garden now was. After about 20
couples, there came a middle-aged couple with two teenage children, one
of whom was a scrawny 13 year old with a bad case of acne, who had an understanding
of outward ugliness and hidden beauty. As his parents were talking about
the house with the old man, he walked around in the huge yard filled with
weeds, looking for something unknown, and he saw a little purple flower
struggling to grow above the weeds. As he parted the weeds he discovered
many little miniature irises trying to get sunshine. As he looked further
and deeper into the garden he saw many beginnings of plants he recognized,
for his father had taught him about the beauties of nature. The family
was joyful at finding what was to them a hidden treasure and they couldn't
wait to begin weeding and watering. They bought the house with the tearful
blessing of the joyful old man who saw the vision of the beauty of his
wife's garden spring forth in his mind and he felt impatient to tell her
of their good fortune in finding a family who saw the potential in the
hidden garden.

What are we looking for? It is easy to see the lovely little well-tended
blossoms--the child who sits in a quiet magical mesmerized state before
a flickering candle singing "Jesus Loves Me" and thanking God
for mommy and daddy; and we fall in love with the lovely little sweetpeas
who bring mommy breakfast in bed. But how do we feel about the fifth grader
who cannot bring mommy breakfast in bed--he just has to rush out to the
park because about 10 friends are waiting for him to play baseball because
he is the only one who really knows the rules and how to play fair. What
spiritual quality is hidden? What spiritual qualities are usually ignored
by the spiritual adults?

Most children at some stage or other exhibit any combination of the
more obvious spiritual qualities--being kind, patient, appreciative of
beauty, desirous of relieving suffering, joyous, sincere, trusting, and
so forth. However, it is my experience, both personal and from observing
others, that there is a tendency to negate the less obvious qualities and
the ones which are more difficult to direct --love of adventure, competitive
spirit, leadership, desire to show and teach others, perseverance and a
sense of humor. These traits sometimes seem to be more obvious and/or stronger
in male children, especially after the arrival of the Thought Adjuster.

There is a fifth-grade boy at the center who often seems to be on the
receiving end of adult negativism. He has a large, strong body and is an
obvious extrovert. You cannot keep him at the back of the line on a hike,
and this has alienated him from teachers who desire to control such a child.
Everything he thinks seems to immediately exit from his mouth in loud,
aggressive statements. He can't keep his mouth shut, because he is full
of suggestions and is a real problem solver, so he is immediately involved
in anything of any intensity that happens. Some would call him a smart
mouth and an instigator. I call him The Viking, and to me he is an obvious
leader. When I have a problem that a child can help with, The Viking is
the first one I will call to help me. He will be out front in the battles
of life saying, "Follow me," if the adult world doesn't destroy
his self-esteem for being himself. Granted, he does need to learn self-control
and discrimination and temperance.

Remember the quote on page 159: "Love of adventure, curiosity,
and dread of monotony--these traits inherent in evolving human nature--were
not put there just to aggravate and annoy you during your short sojourn
on earth, but rather to suggest to you that death is only the beginning
of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation,
an eternal voyage of discoveryNot until you traverse the last of the Havona
circuits and visit the last of the Havona worlds, will the tonic of adventure
and the stimulus of curiosity disappear from your career."

We can do better with this innate sense of adventure than give our children
TV and Nintendo. We have become so paranoid as a society and lazy or exhausted
as parents that we are denying our children the experience of calculated
risks and reasonable adventures. It is very safe, we think, for them to
watch violence on TV or to sit for hours playing Nintendo, safer than sharing
in some other forms of entertainment or outlets for that desire for adventure.
Kids have told me that they love Nintendo because of the challenge--once
you conquer one level, there immediately is another one and by the time
you've conquered the whole game, the company has produced another game
with hundreds of levels to conquer. A little of this goes a long way, but
it is surprising how many children have made this their substitute for
adventure because their parents are not into camping, hiking, beaches,
skiing, rock hunting, cave exploring, etc. It doesn't even have to be the
parents that do these things, but it might have to be the parents who help
arrange for the child to.

Our Supreme Responsibility as Parents

I don't think that recognizing spiritual living in children is a passive
activity. When walking with children walking with God, we have to be aware
of the path we are traversing so as not to lead them where they will stumble,
for as Jesus emphatically said: "But whosoever causes one of these
little ones to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were
hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea." (*1761) Now,
obviously, because we are not the perfect parents, friends or teachers,
we do cause our children to stumble, but Jesus is talking about stumbling
in a very profound way, a spiritual way, a damaging way. Adults should
feel a sense of responsibility when they are in the presence of children,
for they should know that the child is unconsciously modeling, but with
parenting the responsibility is quite encompassing. On page 941 the Chief
of Seraphim stationed on Urantia tells us that "[B]ringing a child
into the worldentails the supreme responsibility of human existence."
This supreme responsibility begins even before conception, as the parents
are thinking about when to begin a family; and relationship begins at birth,
even before birth. Relationship is the fertile soil from which grows the
religious and spiritual development of our children. If we are firmly rooted
in our relationship to our Father, our children will be able to send deep
roots of their own being into that soil and then can be observed what is
talked about on page 1013: "Religious meanings progress in self-consciousness
when the child transfers his ideas of omnipotence from his parents to God.
And the entire religious experience of such a child is largely dependent
on whether fear or love has dominated the parent-child relationship."

Springing forth from our relationship to God will come the framework
of loyalties around which our children may build their lives: "Children
are permanently impressed only by the loyalties of their adult associates;
precept or even example is not lastingly influential. Loyal persons are
growing persons, and growth is an impressive and inspiring reality. Live
loyally today--grow--and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way
for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
(*1094)

And on page 2088, five of these sacred human loyalties are clearly presented:
personal honor, family love, religious obligation, social duty, and economic
necessity. These are each worthy of intense study and personal family interpretations.
The authors of this revelation do not freely use the term "sacred."
And these five sacred human loyalties are not learned by our conscious
teaching of them to our children. They are absorbed into the deep part
of their being as they watch us live our everyday lives. And if you think
they are not aware of what we do and how we do it most of the time, spend
a day consciously watching them watch you--stop talking at them and watch
yourself as they watch you. Children are capable of the most minute observations.
At the daycare center we spend a great deal of time in conflict resolution
and as we guide them to talk to each other about problems and feelings
and what began the negative feelings, we will get down to a tone of voice
or a movement, a look, which was interpreted by one party as negating the
validity of the other.

* * *

Our relationship to God and our loyalties are the external structure
we provide for our children's development psychologically and spiritually.
The universe provides the great gifts--the adjutant spirits (intuition,
understanding, spontaneous association of ideas, courage, knowledge, counsel,
herd instinct and social development), the Thought Adjusters and the angels--as
the spiritual internal structure.

Adjutant Influence

The adjutants begin to function with the acquisition of the potential
of the ability to learn from experience, "[A]nd they function from
the lowliest minds of primitive and invisible existences up to the highest
types in the evolutionary scale of human beings. They are the source and
pattern for the otherwise more or less mysterious behavior and incompletely
understood quick reactions of mind to the material environment." (*739)

Do we hear how important is learning from experience? There is a rather
complex quote on page 1123 talking about the fact of experience: "What
is human experience? It is simply any interplay between an active and questioning
self and any other active and external reality. The mass of experience
is determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of the reality
of the external. The motion of experience equals the force of expectant
imagination plus the keenness of the sensory discovery of the external
qualities of contacted reality. The fact of experience is found in self-consciousness
plus other-existences--other-thingness, other-mindedness, and other-spiritness."
This is another one of those quotes that parents and teachers could chew
on for quite a while and it could really help us to determine what kind
of experiences we should help our children have. Nintendo and automated
robotic toys may not fit these descriptions very well. Notice the key words:
active, depth, reality, imagination, sensory discovery. Do you know any
parents who with a minimum of whining will buy their toddler a Donald Duck
doll that quacks but will not let them play with the flour and the pots
and pans?

"It is civilization's protection of the child from the natural
consequences of foolish conduct that contributes so much to modern insubordination."
(*941)

Do we see the connections between the beginnings of the workings of
the adjutants and allowing our children to experience the natural consequences
of their foolish behavior?

Now we are assuming common sense here--but the child who has never felt
a hot stove or been allowed to get close enough to fire to feel its intense
heat are the ones that are most likely to get burned. Children are little
sensors. I have stood by a year-old child at the fireplace and watched,
ready to grab hand away, as the child very carefully and slowly put the
hand closer and closer to the fire until it began to get uncomfortable.
I have also watched the parents of a young child with great panic grab
a child away from the fire before it could feel any heat and tell the child
with great emotion that the child could burn up if it got too close. We
have a pool at our home which causes me great anxiety when we have our
many little friends visit, but I am training myself to be a little more
watchful and less reactive as they begin to experience a big body of water
from the side.

Here is another example. We have a rat cult at our center--the children
love to hold them and they make great pets. However, as with everything
there are risks. The children are allowed to take them outside and let
them run on an area called rat hill. They were plainly warned of the dangers
of stepping on a rat if they did not watch where they and the rat were
in relation to one another. Yes, it did happen once--a child stepped on
a rat and a group of 15 children walked into the center carrying the rat,
crying. The rat had not quite died, but lay in pained breathing while we
all watched the life ebb away and cried together. Daily as the children
take the rats out to rat hill, that story is told over and over. That one
incident has done more for children being careful than any words that could
be used. We let the children hold the baby rats when they are young and
pink saying that if they were dropped they would die. And, yes, one was
dropped and did die right before a whole circle of us. But do these experiences
mean that we don't allow the children to take the rats outside or to hold
baby rats? Why do we have the rats, anyway? Not for the intrinsic value
of rats, for sure!

All parents should do an intense, in-depth study of the adjutants and
come to understandings as to how they can provide experiential lessons
in their home environments so that the adjutants can do their job. I believe
that this is especially true of education--instead of accepting the "artificial
and superficial education" which occurs in many of our nation's public
schools. It does appear that the more we allow our children to learn from
experience and provide the arenas for decisions, decisions, and more decisions,
the more effective can be the work of the adjutant circuits.

Thought Adjuster Influence

"[A]llnonself desires do actually have their origin in the leadings
of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, and this Adjuster is a fragment of
God. The impulse of the spirit Monitor is realized in human consciousness
as the urge to be altruistic, fellow-creature minded." (*1132) Once
again, it is the basic responsibility of parents to think about this and
explore what it means for them in their particular home environment. What
I see prevalent to a dangerous degree today--and there are a number of
social researchers also concerned about this phenomenon--is the influence
of TV advertising on both children and parents. It could make some kind
of valuable impact on the child if instead of buying the child 10 Ninja
Turtles to tell the child that 3 is enough and "Let's send the money
that we would spend on the other 7 to a homeless shelter."

I teach 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades at the center in our summer school.
I thought it didn't go very well this summer; they seemed somewhat bored,
although they were tremendously cooperative. So we had an evaluation session
and I asked them what they would like to do next summer to make it more
valuable for them. When put to a vote, among many suggestions for having
fun and entertaining themselves, about 85% of them voted that they wanted
to go out into the community and help other people in some way or another.
We will try to find a way to do this next summer.

In the Sermon on the Mount on page 1575 as explanation to the fourth
supreme reaction of fatherly love, "Happy are they who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," they
also mention that "[E]very child should early learn to sacrifice."

In an old book which was used as a textbook at Berkeley High School
in the 1930's, Piloting Modern Youth, Dr. William S. Sadler wrote
about the value of "thwarting." On page 127 of this book it says:
"The non-thwarting idea is fundamentally wrong. The moment a child
steps out into the workaday world, it is certain to be thwarted; this is
the common lot of man. The ability to redirect impulses, to modify emotions,
to curb appetites and control longings is absolutely essential to personality
development and social progress. Society demands graceful submission to
thwarting on the part of every individual. Thwarting, then, is natural
and inevitable. It is a part of human evolution. We cannot always have
our wayDisappointment is unavoidable. During very early nursery days, the
child should be introduced to the idea that it cannot always have its way.
It should clearly be trained in the art of becoming more or less disappointment
proof. By this means many of the serious personality breakdowns of later
adolescence can be prevented." Providing neat things, fun and entertainment
for children are some of the more enjoyable parts of being a parent. If
other activities are in balance for the child, then it is doubtful that
any one activity will hurt. But it does seem that it is rather imbalanced
today. I have asked many teenagers what their favorite activity is--Nintendo
and shopping. I have asked them what their parents like to do on the weekends--TV
and shopping.

Sooooooo.

What else can they be doing? Listen to what 15 year olds do on that
other continent we are told about: "Children remain legally subject
to their parents until they are fifteen when the first initiation into
civic responsibility is held. Thereafter, every five years for five successive
periods similar public exercises are held for such age groups at which
their obligations to parents are lessened, while their new civic and social
responsibilities to the state are assumed." (*811) Suffrage is conferred
at 20--look how well prepared they are while our 20 year olds almost lay
down their lives to see Led Zeppelin or Madonna. One thing is for sure--the
time to begin to think about these things is not when our kids are 13 or
14.

Although children can be very, very selfish and egoistic, all of us
see many examples of the beautiful caring and giving that most children
are involved with all the time. How many of you have stacks (or would have
if you had saved them all) of all of the drawings and sweet sayings you
have been given?

Angel Influence

Jesus told his apostles on page 1761: "[F]or their angels do always
behold the faces of the heavenly hosts."

In times of crisis many of us have experienced being upheld by the angels
in our experiences of intense grief and shock. Going through this with
children can be mightily inspiring--watching them be held by the angels
and allowing themselves to be carried in the arms of loved ones, even when
they have experienced the loss of a loved one.

I will share with you the most profound experience of my life with children
and loss and being upheld by the angels. About one and a half years ago
my sister committed suicide. Her two children, aged 10 and 12 came home
from school and found her dead in her bedroom; although she had put up
a chair in front of the door and they couldn't get in, they could see her
feet and part of her lying on the floor. When they found they couldn't
get to her, they called their father who works about one and a half hours
away, and when they couldn't get him, they went out into the backyard to
wait for him. When I asked them what they did out there, they said they
cried. They said the hardest part (not including what they had gone through)
was telling their father when he walked through the door. Do you think
that the angels were holding these two children as they cried and waited?

My husband and I picked them up that night and brought them back to
our home. The children and I were in one car and my husband and their father
in the other. It was an exceptionally beautiful nightspringtime, full moon.
As we drove through the hills we all commented on the beauty of the hills
silhouetted by the full moon and shared with each other about the beautiful
night in the midst of great sorrow. How amazing that these children were
able to see the beauty of that night! We were very open to the process
of being ministered to by the angels.

The 12-year-old girl asked me to type a letter to her mother the day
after her mother had died. At this point of perhaps the greatest grief
that could be experienced by a child, she had the presence of mind to want
to communicate her last thoughts to her mother. She read this at her mother's
open casket and then placed the letter in her mother's folded hands:

"Dear Mommy, We are sorry you are not with us. We may not know
why this has happened but you probably know yourself for many reasons.
We will always remember the good and happy times we spent with you. In
our hearts those moments will never perish. We hope that you are at rest
and peace without any worries or problems. God is with you and you are
with God."

Stages of Moral and Spiritual Development

"[Jesus] taught morality, not from the nature of man, but from
the relation of man to God." (*1585) Morality is completely tied up
with relationship. Remember what the chief of seraphim tells us on page
942: "Family life is the progenitor of true morality, the ancestor
of the consciousness of loyalty to duty. The enforced associations of family
life stabilize personality and stimulate its growth through the compulsion
of necessitous adjustment to other and diverse personalities. But even
more, a true family--a good family--reveals to the parental procreators
the attitude of the Creator to his children, while at the same time such
true parents portray to their children the first of a long series of ascending
disclosures of the love of the Paradise parent of all universe children."

It is within the family that the child first learns of his/her value,
first to the parents, then to self, then to the world. Before children
can give to others, they first have to have a self from which to give.
"But before a child has developed sufficiently to acquire moral capacity
and therefore to be able to choose altruistic service, he has already developed
a strong and well-unified egoistic natureVery early in life, the normal
child begins to learn that it is `more blessed to give than to receive.'"
(*1131)

Children learn how to treat others by modeling the way the people they
love and respect treat each other and others. If a child has a problem
with bad language or putting others down, we ask the child if s/he has
been put down at home. Most often they say they do hear bad language in
the home and that they are put down in the home, either by parents or older
siblings.

On page 1585 Jesus says, "[T]he morality of any act is determined
by the individual's motive." If a child's motive is throughout life
to get something that it didn't get in the early years, it is very difficult
for that child to truly think of others; to live the golden rule as restated
by Jesus which is to do to others as you think Jesus would do to you.

The children whose basic needs have not been fulfilled are very needy
and at all junctures, their own needs take precedence over the needs of
others. This can be lessened as we work to uplift their basic self-esteem.
We can almost tell within a couple of days if a new child comes from a
home whose parents understand and employ excellent child development principles
in their rearing. The children are very sensitive to the needs of others,
are usually good listeners, really hear what's being said, and respond
appropriately.

What is the connection between moral development and spiritual development?
"When mind chooses a right moral judgment by an act of the free will,
such a decision constitutes a religious experience." (*1131)

Innate Moral Nature--"The psychology of a child is naturally positive,
not negative. So many mortals are negative because they were so trained.In
the absence of wrong teaching, the mind of the normal child moves positively,
in the emergence of religious consciousness, toward moral righteousness
and social ministry, rather than negatively, away from sin and guilt."
(*1131)

"The Adjusters cannot invade the mortal mind until it has been
duly prepared by the indwelling ministry of the adjutant mind-spirits and
encircuited in the Holy Spirit. And it requires the co-ordinate function
of all seven adjutants to thus qualify the human mind for the reception
of an Adjuster. Creature mind must exhibit the worship outreach and indicate
wisdom function by exhibiting the ability to choose between the emerging
values of good and evil--moral choice." (*1187)

It seems that there are always some children who give into the temptation
to steal. When I first began working with children, I was disgusted with
this, but have since found it not that unusual. It can happen in the best
of homes and can be a tremendous opportunity for the child to be called
to make a decision about this problem. Some children get very good at denial
and would convince the best adult judge of his/her innocence. After working
with children, an adult develops almost a sixth sense about the child.
It is very important to be correct about the judgment; it is very important
for the child to be caught and experience consequences. There are a number
of good books out on how to handle this issue. I use "catching"
a child as an opportunity to very directly talk to them about this being
an opportunity for making a decision to become strong. We talk about how
stealing makes one feel weak inside, and every child I have talked to about
this knows exactly the feeling I am describing. Every child wants to be
strong; to have power; to have control over themselves for as I ask them:
"If you do not control yourself, who will?," they of course will
answer in some fashion or another, "Someone else." Children like
to think they have some degree of control over their own lives and what
they do. This is a very appealing argument for them. I will then have the
child, if they are able, to write an agreement with me about their decision
they must make. They can have several days to think about it, but these
decisions can happen on the spot.

"Time is essential to all types of human adjustment--physical,
social or economic. Only moral and spiritual adjustments can be made on
the spur of the moment and even these require the passing of time for the
full outworking of their material and social repercussions." (*911)

Many of the children when they enter daycare at five or so, probably
do not have their Thought Adjusters. There seems to be a lack of self-consciousness
and some of them have not progressed from stage zero of moral reasoning
which is: "Whatever I want is what's fair." In raising good children,
Dr. Thomas Lickona outlines the stages of moral development as first shown
in three decades of research by Harvard University psychologist Lawrence
Kohlberg who is a widely recognized leading figure in the psychology of
moral development. It is important to understand the process of moral reasoning
from inside a child's mind. This helps us to appreciate the different stages
children go through rather than expecting impossible things of them and
belittling them for not being able to meet your expectations. For instance,
it is good for fathers to have high standards and challenge their children's
growth, but research shows that unfortunately, because of this lack of
knowledge, father's expectations are generally two years ahead of what
the child is really capable of, causing problems all around. Stage 1 is:
You should do what you are told; stage 2 is: What's in it for me?; stage
3 is: What will people think of me?; stage 4 is: What if everybody did
it?; and stage 5 is: Respect the rights of every person.

"Man's choosing between good and evil is influenced, not only by
the keenness of his moral nature, but also by such influences as ignorance,
immaturity, and delusion. A sense of proportion is also concerned in the
exercise of virtue because evil may be perpetrated when the lesser is chosen
in the place of the greater as a result of distortion or deception. The
art of relative estimation or comparative measurement enters into the practice
of the virtues of the moral realm." (*193)

What is the connection between moral development and spirituality? "Every
time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a
new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as
the motive of inner response to outer conditions." (*2095)

External Environment

We have been looking more at the psychological and spiritual climate
of the internal development of the child. What kind of external
environment is conducive to the development of the child's personal relationship
to God; to the working of the adjutant spirits, the angels and the Thought
Adjuster; to moral development and personal spiritual experience?

In his book Talking to Children about God, David Heller talks
about the importance of planning a "spiritually enlightened home,"
for of course this is where it all begins as we shoot them from our arrows.
This is as varied as personal home environments. Heller says, "In
your home, religion is the spiritual atmosphere that you create through
your everyday parenting. You may attend formal religious services every
week, but your spiritual life is experienced each and every moment."
(pg. 11)

Great Value of Beauty

"It was also at Jericho, in connection with the discussion of the
early religious training of children in habits of divine worship, that
Jesus impressed upon his apostles the great value of beauty as an influence
leading to the urge to worship, especially with children. The Master by
precept and example taught the value of worshiping the Creator in the midst
of the natural surroundings of creationWhen it is not possible to worship
God in the tabernacles of nature, men should do their best to provide houses
of beauty, sanctuaries of appealing simplicity and artistic embellishment,
so that the highest of human emotions may be aroused in association with
the intellectual approach to spiritual communion with God. Truth, beauty,
and holiness are powerful and effective aids to true worship. But spirit
communion is not promoted by mere massive ornateness and overmuch embellishment
with man's elaborate and ostentatious art. Beauty is most religious when
it is most simple and naturelike. How unfortunate that little children
should have their first introduction to concepts of public worship in cold
and barren rooms so devoid of the beauty appeal and so empty of all suggestion
of good cheer and inspiring holiness! The child should be introduced to
worship in nature's outdoors and later accompany his parents to public
houses of religious assembly which are at least as materially attractive
and artistically beautiful as the home in which he is daily domiciled."
(*1840)

It would appear that we are given some direct instruction here as to
the best ways for children to be introduced to worship--in nature's
outdoors. So, parents, don't feel guilty about taking that Sunday walk
with your children and having a family worship time.

It is our privilege and duty to work with the subtle yet real and powerful
spiritual influences as we both progress in our own relationship with God
and our growth toward the Supreme, and provide the environment and guidance
for children to experience a growing relationship to their spiritual Father.
Many parents who are spiritually committed are discovering arenas for working
with children in many phases of our lives.

One mother conducted a study, using her daughter's preschool as her
research arena, to find out about the relationship of fathers with their
children based on their involvement with them since birth. She has extended
this study to many other preschools and the study has of course shown that
the more involvement fathers have with their children since birth, the
closer is their relationship at the preschool age. Another sideline that
has turned out to be very satisfying are the numerous profound and spiritual
discussions she has enjoyed with fathers regarding the results of the study.

I would imagine that the hope of all of us is that our children know
God as their Father. Many of us would find great joy if they would discover
the fifth epochal revelation in a personal way and would embrace and participate
in it on a personal level so as to make their life richer, spiritually,
philosophically, psychologically and socially; and some of us would extend
our dreams even a little further out for our children--that some of them
might become the mighty leaders that page 2082 talks about: "Religion
does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend
solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings[T]hese new teachers of Jesus'
religionwill be exclusively devoted to the spiritual regeneration of men.
And then will these spirit-born souls quickly supply the leadership and
inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic and political reorganization
of the world."

And as we all know, the social, moral, economic and political reorganization
of the world begins at home.